Category Archives: Crazy Euopean People

Chinese Wife, Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Germans, Me, Our cute son

Another Day at a Renaissance Fair

June 19, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 34 Comments

Last year I wrote about the little medieval market we visited during the 888 years celebrations of my hometown. Shortly afterwards I gave you some impressions from a much bigger renaissance fair near our place. Back then I was thinking how great it would be to dress up as well like so many other people were doing it at the big medieval market. Lets just say my wife and I were gathering some stuff since last year and put it into use last month.

mpsh12 — People are slowly arriving at the festival

Back in May just a week after we arrived from China it was time again for the renaissance fair near my hometown. The whole event was going on for three days but we chose to go only on one day (the middle day) as it is pretty tough going around with a little kid such as Nathan in addition to be rather pricey when thinking about the tickets and food there. We immediately regretted that we didn’t go during the first day because the weather changed for the worse. We had all the time sunshine till the day we wanted to go to the fair. The day started without any sunshine, instead it was all grey in grey but on the bright side it was dry. Guess I was too happy too early about having no rain as the first downpour out of many started right after we arrived at the fair.

mpsh11 — Some creatures getting shelter from the first downpour

Even though the weather wasn’t the best the festival area quickly filled up. All over the place they had tents to give shelter from the rain and huge bonfires to get some warmth in case the Met wasn’t enough. Due to the bad weather Nathan was forced to wear a jacket and thus couldn’t present his Chinese Emperor costume to the world. My wife was wearing a Chinese dress she bought in China plus all the accessories and I had created my own personalized clothing since last year. Okay I didn’t made anything myself as I bought most things and my mother actually tailored me few parts as well. I fashioned my costume, as a Lord of the Rings nerd, after the Rangers of Ithilien. Sure it is not authentic but it looks alright in my opinion. As this renaissance fair’s motto is also “Not Authentic but Phantastic” it fits just well. You could see people with real clothes from back in the day but also many Elves, Orcs, Trolls, Pirates and last but not least also a guy wearing a Unicorn dress…

mpsh7 — A little parade around the festival area

I wanted to take so many pictures there this year again of the whole area plus of ourselves but the weather wasn’t on our side. I didn’t want to damage my cameras in the rain thus I ended up with just too few pictures which I took in the rare rainless minutes. Due to the bad weather we also stayed only for a few hours. Right when we wanted to watch the Bruchenball tournament (some kind of rugby game with a 30kg heavy ball…check out this link for some pictures) I spotted huge dark clouds approaching and we hurried back to the car. Just when we arrived some real big storm started to bring hell on earth as huge hailstones threaten to destroy my car. Anyways we arrived safely back home and were happy that I spotted those clouds as it would have been no fun to be in the renaissance fair with that storm.

mpsh1 — Beginning of the Bruchenball Tournament with the last bit of sunshine for that day

For this year we have planned to go to another renaissance fair in September managed by the same organizer. That time it will be in Hamburg and we hope to go there for two days and stay overnight at my cousin’s house who lives just 5 min away by car. The organizer is doing nearly every weekend such festival in different cities all over Germany but we think that going to two of them is more than enough due to our limited free time and of course due to the high costs involved.

Nathan covering his eyes from the strange sun

No sun, I will defend my eyes with this mighty shield

The main artists announcing the beginning of the tournament

Have you dressed up for some event/ did cosplay?

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Chinese Wife, Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Family, Crazy Germans, Our cute son, Travels

Few Days in Cologne

April 3, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 64 Comments

This week we had a special little trip to Cologne, better known for Germans under the name Köln. So what brought us down to Middle Germany, the babaric part south of the river Elbe? My wife had some business to attend there so we decided to make a quick three-day holiday in Cologne. As my mother’s birthday was at the same time we invited my parents to come with us (of course we paid everything ). Somehow luck was on our side and I was able to get a good deal for two rooms and two nights at the Hyatt, let’s just say the breakfast is really good at least for people like me and not so special for people like my Chinese wife…

First some background info about Cologne. It is the fourth biggest city in Germany with a bit over 1 million inhabitants. The city has many famous landmarks with the Cologne Cathedral being probably the most well-known. During the Second World War 95% of the city was destroyed and the population had been reduced by over 90%, no wonder it was even called “world’s greatest heap of rubble”. Even though Cologne had been reduced to basically nothing it was rebuild again with reconstruction work lasting until the 1990s. You can check out pictures of how the city looked like after the war on any search engine and it is really amazing how people were able to rebuild it all again.

Our journey started on Tuesday morning but we wouldn’t arrive in Cologne until late afternoon due to terrible weather and several traffic jams. Under normal conditions the drive would usually take roughly five hours but in our case it took more than seven hours, no joy…really. Especially Nathan was a bit odd during that trip as he did not fall asleep at all and was full of energy until the late evening hours. Our hotel was located in a just perfect location as it is just few minutes away by walking from the city center. All you have to do is cross the Hohenzollern Bridge and you are standing right in front of the Cologne Cathedral. The Hohenzollern Bridge itself is one of the landmarks of Cologne and also famous for the thousands of love padlocks placed on the fence between the footpath and the railway lines.

k13 — Cologne Cathedral in the early morning hours

The second day my wife had to be at another hotel already at six AM for her appointment and as it was still dark I walked her there. On my way back to our hotel I took a route through the still empty city center and could take some nice pictures. Later that day we all went once again to the city center and walked by few famous landmarks, the main shopping street and went into the Cologne Cathedral. The Cathedral is just huge, walking around the insides reminded me on the Halls of Moria from Lord of the Rings due to the giant pillars. Visitors can also climb a spiral staircase to a viewing platform at 98m above the ground. I don’t know if it is possible for visitors to climb also the towers which reach up to 157m above ground. Even though we had a wonderful and very filling breakfast we were getting hungry at some point and went to eat at Oma’s Küche (Grandmother’s Kitchen) which is known for its Schnitzel dishes. Though it is very simple food it is still very delicious and more than just filling as the portions are pretty big. In the evening my wife and I went to the Spring Funfair just few minutes away from the hotel. Perhaps you remember one of my blog posts about the funfair at my hometown and how disappointing is was for me to see how small it had become. Well, the funfair in Cologne was so full that it was sometimes impossible to move around. It seems that at least in bigger cities the funfairs are still well visited.

On our last day we left Cologne right after breakfast as we were afraid to be stucked in multiple traffic jams again but to our surprise nothing major happened and we arrived in the afternoon. All in all it was a very nice trip and I recommend going to Cologne in case you are for some time in Germany. We had planned to visit some more places in Cologne such as the Chocolate Museum and other landmarks around the city but the weather was first of all not the best during those days and we just had too little time.

View from our hotel towards the city center

Hohenzollern Bridge with the famous love padlocks

View from another bridge towards the city center and Hohenzollern Bridge

Great St. Martin Church and the Cathedral in the background

Nathan is a bit smaller than the Cathedral

View towards the hotel and some buildings of Deutz

Have you been to Cologne before?

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A Weekend in Sotkamo

November 29, 2015 CrazyChineseFamily 35 Comments

Back in 2011 we visited my wife’s friends in Sotkamo which is in the in the middle east of Finland. From Helsinki Sotkamo is about 580km away by car which means that it takes over 6 1/2 h to get there. So why my wife has friends in the middle of nowhere of Finland? In 2006 my wife started her studies in Finland. She didn’t study in Helsinki in the beginning but in Kajaani which is roughly 30km to the west of Sotkamo. She stayed there for one year until she found another university and moved to Helsinki. During that one year she made many new friends and one of them she still considers to be her best friend and that is the one we visited back then.

We went there in December which means that there is snow, too much snow all around and it is cold, too cold! We left our home near Helsinki at 6am in order to arrive at a reasonable time in Sotkamo for lunch. During those morning hours we had about -16 degrees (Celsius ~ 3 degrees Fahrenheit) which was already a challenge for my poor Diesel powered Opel Astra. Nonetheless the car managed somehow however during the drive to Sotkamo the temperatures plummeted sometimes down to -40 degrees Celsius (-40 degrees Fahrenheit). Let me just say that in never got warm inside the car and even the car engine decided not get warm and thus many other things didn’t work such as the Turbo…(really great when the car has suddenly troubles to get up a small hill!).

It was also during that trip that we had our first (and only) car crash. The whole mess happened towards the final 100km of the journey and wasn’t fun at all. You have to imagine having a road covered in a layer own snow which is compressed and thus nearly like ice at such low temperatures. Somehow I got with my right front tire too much to the right where the snow layer was higher and then everything happened rather quick. At over 80km/h (~50 mp/h) the car started spinning around crashing on the opposite lane into the fields just barely missing an oncoming truck. I don’t know how but nothing happened to us or the car! Some driver who saw everything came to our aid and managed to call on some farmer who pulled us out of the field with his tractor for very little money. I will never forget the feeling when I lost control over the car and saw during the spinning motion the truck coming closer and closer.

snow4 — Getting ready for some cross-country skiing failure

With some delay we managed it finally to Sotkamo where we had our lunch at the friend’s restaurant. Compared to Helsinki Sotkamo was already entirely in the Christmas season with too much snow all around. The little town is known for its skiing resort Vuokatti. It was there I tried my luck to teach my wife how to do cross-country skiing but it didn’t work out so well. In fact my wife gave up after a while so I decided to do a short 2.5 km round but got lost somehow and had to do a 15km round. The skiing center in Vuokatti is very famous in Finland as it offers a variety of possible activities such as downhill skiing, cross-country, ski jumping and there is also a cross-country skiing tunnel which makes training on snow possible during summer time. Though it offers so many sport activties we spent the least time doing any kind of sporty stuff there. My wife had more important things to do with her friends such as talking, eating, watching movies, eating and eating. As said before one of her friends got back then a Chinese restaurant in the town resulting that there was always more than enough food.

As Sotkamo is very small with only 10.000 inhabitants there is also not much to do within the city center. There are some shops around but that’s about it. During winter it is a perfect place for winter sport enthusiasts and in summer time it offers great hiking trails. What makes this place also interesting is that it is not that far away from the Arctic Circle and Santa Claus Village in Rovaniemi where my wife visited once with her friends in 2009 but that is again stuff for another time.